


A Night Out

by nixwilliams



Category: Ginger Meggs - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-10
Updated: 2008-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:59:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nixwilliams/pseuds/nixwilliams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s remarkable, thought Ed, how a voice can be so familiar that you don’t hear it for over a decade and yet you instantly know you still hate the bloke it belongs to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Night Out

**Author's Note:**

> This is a futurefic set in present day Australia, and the characters are adults. My limited knowledge of Ginger Meggs comes mostly from the book _Ginger Meggs At Large_ by James Kemsley (1985). I tried to retain a little of the atmosphere of this book, and as a result some of the language in this fic might seem dated or anachronistic (and I’ve kept the Meggsian spelling of ‘feller’ instead of ‘fella’). These men are not beacons of feminist or queer enlightenment, and many of the attitudes expressed herein do not reflect my own.
> 
> You can read more about the people involved in the production of Ginger Meggs throughout the last century at [gingermeggs.com](http://www.gingermeggs.com/). I am not one of those people, and I’m not making any money from this venture – it’s just a bit of fun for me. The current Ginger Meggs artist is Jason Chatfield, whose blog you can find [here](http://www.jasonchatfield.com/blog/).
> 
> Thanks to [johnnypurple](http://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnypurple/pseuds/johnnypurple) for the speedy beta and nifty punctuation wrangling, to DB for casting deciding votes on the use of certain words, and to Sajee for cricket lolz.
> 
> Originally posted in December 2008 on Dreamwidth.
> 
>  **Warning: There is an element of dubious consent in this fic.**

The Carriageway was one of those poorly lit city-fringe pubs. The kind of place, reflected Ed, where a bloke could go and get shitfaced late on a Thursday afternoon and not have to worry about making small talk with anyone. For a start, on this particular Thursday he was one of three fellers in the joint, and the other two looked just as hell-bent on drinking themselves into next week as he felt. Not that _he_ would do that, given that he had a job to attend at 8:45am sharp on Friday mornings, but if he’d had the option, he’d have bloody well taken it. At any rate, he wasn’t expected back in the office that afternoon, and he’d put in overtime every other day of the week, so he was damn well entitled to knock off a few hours early.

He caught the bar woman’s eye, and asked for another pot of the same. She wasn’t a bad looker, really. Maybe a bit soft around the edges, but she wore her weight well, and she had those dark brown eyes like you imagine the girls might have in the old black and white movies, if those movies had been made in colour. Ed gave her a charming smile and told her to keep the change from five bucks – only twenty cents, but then at $4.80 for a pot it was nearly highway robbery. Jeez, Ed could remember a time and place where you’d be laughed out of town if you tried to charge more than three bucks. And it wasn’t that long ago, either, considering he was only 29. His charms had little effect on the woman. She nodded and grunted, then turned to get a tray of glasses out of the dishwasher. Ed snorted quietly to himself and thought, not for the first time, that some birds just don’t know when a real gentleman is in the room.

The TV up the other end of the bar was showing reruns of the greyhounds, sound down, and Ed watched it blankly for a bit. There was a time he’d’ve been placing bets on the dogs or the nags or anything else that moved for that matter, but a full time job had curbed that desire. In private moments, Ed acknowledged that this wasn’t so much to do with growing out of it as it was about directing the urge elsewhere. You can swear til you’re blue in the face that you know how to ride the stock markets, but there are going to be shithouse weeks when you face the fact that it’s never more than a guess and a gamble.

He turned his attention back to his beer and took a long draught. Getting shitfaced wasn’t something Ed made a regular habit of – once a month maybe, he’d have a night out on the town with a third date, or with some mates from the office. But after a week when the US subprime market finally disappeared up its own arse in a puff of smoke, leaving Ed’s clients calling him in a panic at all times of the day and night, well, you have to cut a feller some slack. Top that off with the big boss gnawing his ear off about the portfolio he’d been handling for SunBank, and _whammo!_ You’ve got yourself more than enough reason to be making an early start on tomorrow’s hangover.

Screw the boss, thought Ed bitterly, and waved the bartender over for another pot. She plonked it down in front of him, nearly sloshing it over his pinstripe suit sleeve. After discovering he didn’t have any more cash, she grudgingly agreed to put it on a tab, _if_ she could keep his credit card behind the till. Ed gave her the company card and put the consequences of his actions in the bit of his mind labelled ‘Deal With This Later’. For want of anything better to do, he stretched along the bar and grabbed the messily folded copy of Thursday’s paper, flicked idly through the sports section for a few minutes, then stopped at the page with the weather and puzzles and comics.

He filled out the Sudoku in less than five minutes, and moved on to the cryptic crossword. He was ruminating over 7 down, ‘Sharp treatment, love, in old lighthouse’, when the pub door opened and closed, and a few seconds later a voice beside him said, “Ed? Edward Coogan?”

Ed looked up from the paper to find himself face to face with Andrew Sykes – an old mate from way back when he was still running messages and making coffee for higher-ups – a man he hadn’t seen for almost five years.

“Andy!” he said, and shook his hand vigourously. “What’re you doing here? Thought you ran away and joined the circus? Or was it the navy?”

“Army, Eddie. Engineering,” Andy reminded him good naturedly, “And we’re off to Indonesia tomorrow. Thought I’d have a quiet one with a couple of mates – they’ll be along soon, I expect. Looks like you’ve already started,” he added, and gestured to the empty glasses by Ed’s elbow.

“Oh, these?” Ed glanced around the room and lied, “Nah, a couple of the blokes from work just left.”

“Ah,” said Andy, with a wince. “Still playing the markets, then? You chaps haven’t had a good week, I’ll bet.”

Ed shrugged. “All part of the job, mate. What goes up must come down, and eventually everything will come back around. Can I get you a beer?” He was waving the woman over before Andy had a chance to reply. She pulled another beer with a smile for Andy, which pissed Ed off immediately. What was with these birds always going for goddamn soldiers? Still, he supposed he couldn’t begrudge Andy a piece of tail if it was his last night in the country. “You’re in luck,” he smirked. Andy gave him a somewhat bemused look, and asked the woman for a packet of salted peanuts.

They exchanged news about old workmates – who was married, who was divorced, who was working for whom, and who (in one notable case) had been chucked in the clink for fraud. One of Andy’s friends turned up dressed in an off-the-rack suit and a cheap tie, which Ed correctly reckoned made him a public servant of some kind. His name was Sajiv, and he and Andy started chewing the fat about his wife and family, and a mutual friend who was about to move to London. Ed kept one ear in, and looked around the pub. It had started to fill up. At least, thought Ed, as much as a dingy old pub tends to get filled up on a Thursday evening. A group of student types had set up a game of Scrabble in the corner, and down the other end of the bar a couple of lookers were gasbagging away over glasses of red. A younger bird had started serving, and was busy flirting with a short, scruffy joker in a red check shirt while she mixed him some kind of pooncey drink. Ed eventually caught her attention, and got another round on his tab. He raised his glass to Sajiv and Andy, and jumped a little when his phone started jiggling around in his pocket. He checked the screen, said, “I gotta get this, excuse me,” and flipped it open.

It was the big boss’s PA, Suzanne, calling with a meeting rearrangement for tomorrow and some other equally boring shit. Ed made a note in his organiser, and listened as she babbled on at a hundred miles a minute. Clearly the woman was stressed, and it was no skin off Ed’s nose to let her let fly. He said “Oh” and “Uh huh” and “Really?” a few times, and drew moustaches on all the comic strip characters in the paper in between mouthfuls of beer. Behind him, the door swung open and closed, letting in the sound of the traffic outside.

“Where’s a feller get a drink around here?”

It’s remarkable, thought Ed, how a voice can be so familiar that you don’t hear it for over a decade and yet you instantly know you still hate the bloke it belongs to. His guts clenched with recognition. In the mirror behind the bar he stared at the newcomer’s red hair and rolled up shirtsleeves as he slapped Andy on the back and shook hands with Sajiv. Ed caught up with himself a moment later, realised he was sitting, frozen, with his drink halfway to his mouth and Suzanne still prattling in his ear. He put his beer carefully on the bar and took a slow breath to calm himself. “Suze, I’ve gotta go,” he said. “I’m just about to meet my Mum and take her out for her birthday. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“You’re a sweetheart, Eddie,” she told him. “Don’t forget the meeting’s at 9:30, not ten.”

Ed pocketed his phone and turned back to meet Andy’s grin with one of his own. “I don’t know how he gets away with this shit,” Andy commented. “Julian, this is Edward Coogan; Ed, Julian.”

Ed had reckoned on having the upper hand – he’d had a quip about gingers ready to go. But typical bloody Meggs had gone and changed his bloody name, probably just out of spite and the slim possibility of exactly this ever happening. It was official; Ed’s week had just turned the corner from worse to suicidally depressing.

“Julian?” he forced out, hoping it sounded more like condescending disinterest than a yelp of shock, and that the grimace plastered across his face looked less like a plastered smile, and more like a cool smirk.

“Edward,” replied Meggs, and held his hand out. They shook, and Ed supposed he was the only one who noticed that Meggs’s eyes narrowed the slightest fraction, and that he gripped a little bit tighter than was entirely necessary.

“Ed’s a stockbroker, investment advisor, an old mate of mine,” Andy was saying, “from back before I joined the forces. We were both working for some dodgy dealer and we used to go out larking on the weekends.”

“Dodgy dealer, eh?” drawled Meggs. “I can barely believe it.”

Ed muttered, “Sanctimonious crank,” under his breath, and raised his glass to his mouth.

Andy couldn’t have heard Ed’s comment, but his eyes flickered between them for a second. “Do you know each other?” he asked, with a curious kind of uncertainty.

“Hardly,” replied Meggs, voice clear and full of the same smug arrogance Ed had always detested. “You know one stockbroker, you know them all.” Then he looked at Andy and grinned. “You don’t count, mate. You’re paying for it now, going off around the world dealing with the mistakes these suits make.”

“And what is it that you do, Julian?” asked Ed. Seemed that Meggs had become some bloody tree-hugging leftie.

Sajiv and Andy both guffawed. “Ed, this is _Julian Meggs_ , right?” said Sajiv. “Just got picked as twelfth man against Tassie. Don’t you read the papers?”

Beaut, thought Ed. Just splendid. Bloody cricket. The little bastard had kept at it and actually got somewhere. “Nah. Been too busy with the global financial meltdown at work,” he said. “No time for trivia.”

“Just the important stuff, hey?” noted Meggs. “Forcing people out of their mortgages, gambling with their money, that kinda thing?”

“Yeah, important stuff. Like making sure your bloody bank doesn’t cark it. Unlike you people,” sneered Ed, “who get paid millions to whack a ball around a paddock.”

Andy shook his head. “Two of a kind,” he told Sajiv, and laughed when Ed and Meggs turned upon him with identical expressions of outrage. “Just take it outside if you wanna fight it out. Don’t want my superiors getting news of me involved in a pub brawl.”

Meggs grinned, then. “She’ll be right, Andy. I’m sure me and Edward will become firm friends.” He clapped Ed on the back, and turned the conversation to the hailstorm the weekend before. Get your hand off it, thought Ed, but he kept quiet.

The next couple of hours passed by in a mildly inebriated daze. Ed talked to Sajiv a while, and at some point they ordered a couple of baskets of chips from the bistro. Then Meggs got into a discussion about Brett Lee and Bollywood film with Sajiv, while Ed debated the relative merits of footy and rugby with Andy and tried to forget that he was sitting in the Carriageway on a Thursday night with his childhood enemy, Ginger Meggs. Sometimes the forgetting it worked too well, and Ed would pitch in with a comment only to be shut down – always in good humour, of course – by that bloody mongrel. Eventually Ed faded out of the conversation, set his mind to drinking steadily, and thought idly about how to deal with Mr Goodwin’s portfolio tomorrow afternoon.

“Well, I’m off, boys,” announced Andy, as the clock slid around to half ten. Ed made a noise of protest, and Andy gave a rueful grin. “Nah, It’s an early start for me tomorrow.”

“Me too,” Sajiv agreed, and scooped his jacket from the bar.

Andy looked around with a small, contented smile. “I’ll sure miss this country,” he said.

Ed felt a sudden and unfamiliar twist of affection for this bloke he’d worked with back when neither of them knew what the word ‘subprime’ meant, who was about to embark on some armed forces mission to somewhere in Asia and who might never come back. Brave and foolish, thought Ed, and he threw an arm around Andy’s shoulders. “Mate, if you’re ever back in town, you know where to find me. Or, look, here you go,” Ed took his arm back and fumbled a business card out of his wallet. “Email me.”

“Can do,” said Andy, and turned to shake hands with Meggs, promising to follow his cricketing career in the papers.

Ed shook hands and said the usual nice-to-meet-yous with Sajiv, then looked on as Meggs and Sajiv said their goodbyes. Meggs had changed as much as you could expect a feller to change in ten years, thought Ed. He was taller, broader, and his hair had calmed down to a darker colour. But he still looked all of fifteen, in that way sportsmen often do – big ears, a few freckles and a cocky, irritating grin. Just watching him made Ed want to sock someone in the face, and the most satisfactory someone to sock would be Meggs. It dawned on Ed that it wasn’t just because _Julian_ Meggs possessed every mannerism he found annoying in a bloke. It was because Ginger Meggs was the reason Ed found those mannerisms irritating in the first place.

“So long!” called Andy, and Ed came back to himself with a start.

He gave a mock salute, said see ya later, and fled to the bathroom as soon as Andy and Sajiv were out the door. Really, the last thing Ed needed was to sit at a bar with Ginger Meggs and reminisce about the bad old days. He puffed on half a fag in the toilet cubicle, and flushed the stub down the loo. This is what he’d do: he’d go out there, pay the bill, walk down to the station, and get a taxi home. He’d set his alarm for early, take some Berocca and go for a swim in the staff gym before the meeting. Everything nice and planned out. Good. He opened the toilet door to find Meggs lounging against one of the sinks, arms folded. “Smoking, Coogan?” he said.

“Fuck off,” Ed told him. “Ginger.”

“They can fine you for that.”

“Do I look like I give a shit?” Ed replied, and ran his hands under the lukewarm water. “As if I can’t pay a hundred buck fine.”

“Still stealing other people’s money, then?” asked Meggs. He unfolded his legs and stood up.

“Still a hypocrite, then?” Ed stuck his jaw out, challenging. Back in the bar he’d noticed Meggs had got taller, but there wasn’t such a huge height difference between them. When Meggs stepped forward, Ed stepped back, and found his shoulder blade pressed uncomfortably against the broken hand dryer.

“Jeez, you always were a runt,” said Meggs, but his voice was amused, and, if Ed was hearing right, almost nostalgic. Meggs rested one hand on the wall behind Ed’s shoulder, and Ed leaned backwards. Meggs leaned forwards.

“You always were a pain in my arse,” Ed snapped.

“Would you,” said Meggs, leaning closer. “Give up,” he added, and took another half step forward until Ed could feel their clothes brushing together. “Mimicking everything I say?”

Ed swallowed and licked his lips. Something about this night was not going in the direction he’d planned. And then he thought, hang about, what? Because Meggs’s eyes were on his mouth, and Meggs was licking his own lips, and Ed suddenly realised exactly what was going on. “Are you nuts?” he hissed. Clearly one of them must have been – it’s not bloody normal for childhood rivals to start necking in a pub toilet, particularly not when said rivals are both blokes.

“You chicken?” mocked Meggs, narrowing his eyes and leaning closer.

Ed let out a strangled noise. “Grow up,” he said, and pushed Meggs in the chest.

“Fuck you, Coogan,” said Meggs, and kissed the corner of Ed’s mouth, stubble dragging over Ed’s lips.

Ed’s gut lurched. “I should’ve known you were a bloody poofter,” he said, over the rising panic in his throat. This was not happening, this was _not_ happening.

“Tell me you don’t want it,” Meggs replied, one hand slipping inside Ed’s jacket front.

“I’m not,” said Ed, voice barely above a whisper, “I’m not a faggot.”

Meggs pulled his head back with an infuriatingly smug smile. “Oh no, of course you’re not. And _this_ ,” his hand dropped down to press against the bulge at the front of Ed’s trousers, “This isn’t you cracking a fat.”

Ed heard himself give an involuntary groan. “I’m drunk,” he said.

Meggs’s grin was too sharp as he undid Ed’s trouser buttons and yanked the zipper down. “Just like old times, then, mate?” he asked, and slid his hand into Ed’s boxers.

“I’m not your mate,” Ed started, then, “What? Oh, bloody hell, what?”

“Shut up, Coogan,” Meggs growled, and it was something like an order.

Ed felt his head fall back against the hand dryer, and long fingers wrap around his dick. It was alright, he told himself. It was fine, just so long as he didn’t think about it being Ginger Meggs whacking him off. Think of the woman at the bar. Think of Suzanne. Think of that bird at the gym yesterday. Think of, think of –

“Shit,” Meggs was muttering. “Shit, shit, Jesus.” Ed found it impossible to imagine anyone but Ginger Bloody Meggs with that racket going on. At any rate, it had been a while, just quietly, since Ed had got laid – not since the Queen’s Birthday long weekend with that stuck-up English teacher, he reckoned – and that had been so dire that even getting a hand job from a bloke while standing in a green-tinged pub dunny with a sticky floor was a step up.

He lifted his head, and Meggs took his hand off the wall to grab Ed’s hair. “Help a feller out?” Meggs breathed, holding their foreheads together, and Ed supposed it was only fair to reach down and provide some assistance.

Ed tried to consider a number of things through the double haze of alcohol and horniness, and they went something like this: I’m not a homo, and I don’t bloody fancy Ginger Meggs. But this isn’t too bad, and _that thing he did just then_ is brilliant. Think of Suze – oh, hell. Oh. Can’t shoot yet, embarrassing. But. Oh. But, don’t want to be here. Sooner I come the sooner I go. Um. Oh, Jesus H Christ. Oh, um. Um. Uh.

It’s possible that Ed said the last few things out loud as he unloaded with a shudder, but he couldn’t be sure, because Meggs was mumbling a hot stream of curses into Ed’s ear, and shooting his wad almost simultaneously.

They cleaned up in silence. Meggs produced a slightly used hanky, and they rinsed their hands in different sinks.

“So,” said Ed when the silence got too long for his tipsy mind to take. “You ran away from Minnie to become a famous cricketer and root blokes in pub toilets. You’re a classy man, Meggs.”

“I wasn’t the one who racked off, Coogan,” Meggs scowled, and grabbed Ed’s B&H packet from his jacket pocket. “And if that’s what you call a root then you’re more pathetic than I thought. Lighter?”

Ed fumbled with his trousers. “As if Minnie did the running,” he scoffed. “Thought you didn’t smoke.”

“Yeah, she did,” said Meggs, and Ed felt his eyebrows shoot up with shock. Imagine that, his inner voice crowed, Jasmin Peters clearing out on Ginger Meggs! “Everyone does.” Meggs clicked the lighter twice and lit up. “Anyway,” he said, after taking a deep drag, “this is yours.” Ed stood like a stunned mullet as Meggs popped the ciggie between Ed’s lips.

Meggs turned to the mirror, ran his hand through his hair and brushed himself down. “I’m gonna go out there and finish my drink and get the bill,” he said mildly. “I’ll be out of here in five minutes. If you want me, I’ll be at the bar.” Ed stared at him, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and Meggs clapped him on the arm. “I was a bit of a bastard to you when we were kids, Coogan. I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s been real.” And then he was out the door.

Ed felt his head spin, and his guts churn. He took a few frantic puffs on the ciggie, and promptly chucked up in the sink. “Bloody sodding Jesus,” he muttered. “Bloody, bloody hell.” There was no way it took him five minutes to clean the spew off his cufflinks, but when get got back out to the bar Meggs was gone. Ed collected the company credit card from the girl at the bar, who smiled at him and said something about that nice cricketer, then tumbled out into the night.

He ambled down to the station in the still, near-midnight calm. He watched a couple of kids get thickshakes from the kebab place on the corner, and reflected in a slightly sozzled way on the day he’d just had. It’s not often you can have the afternoon off and get shitfaced for free, Ed thought, and he half-wondered why he felt like maybe there was some kind of game he’d just lost.


End file.
